6 Urban and Regional Development opportunities

This is to procure services to promote EU business cooperation with the Republic of Korea and Japan. The action aims to strengthen the presence and visibility of EU companies in Japan and the Republic of Korea through an increase and diversification of export and/or investments and more resilient, green and digital value chains.

The legislative proposal on deforestation and its impact assessment explicitly undertakes the commitment of launching a study with view to extending the product scope to additional derived products within the six commodities initially covered in the initiative (beef, palm oil, soy, wood, cocoa, and coffee). This requires a specific study to extend the product scope, as foreseen in the impact assessment of the legislative proposal. The Regulation aims at eliminating deforestation driven by EU consumption of seven agricultural commodities: rubber, soy, beef, palm oil, wood, cocoa and coffee, and some of their derived products whether they are produced in the EU or imported. The new rules will help to ensure that the products that EU citizens buy, use and consume on the EU market, do not contribute to global deforestation and forest degradation.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is looking for tenderers to submit bids to support and build the evidence base for the Nature for Climate Fund Tree Planting Programme (‘the Programme’).   We welcome proposals from a consortium of organisations bringing together several institutions including (but not limited to) commercial, academia, and / or subject matter experts.   The overall aim is to demonstrate the Programme’s impact in the following outcome areas: a.   Carbon sequestration b.   Biodiversity c.   Flood mitigation d.   Water quality e.   Air quality The development of indicators will be used to demonstrate the short-term changes caused by the Tree Planting Programme up to 2025, and address evidence gaps in the Programme Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Framework.

Defra is now commissioning new research to provide an update assessing the impact of the FIC regulation and to measure recent changes in consumer behaviour and business activity bought about by recent legislative, societal, and technological changes. The evidence will be used to underpin food labelling policy development. We are purchasing one type of service and procuring one contract.   The project is defined by two work packages. Work Package 1 seeks to understand what conclusions can be drawn from existing evidence around how consumers respond to different food labels on the same food products.   The Contractor will be required to undertake a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) as developed by Defra. If during the lifetime of the contract it is identified that findings from the REA need to be explored in more detail and are within scope of the original requirement, this may be instructed through the variation procedure outlined in the contract.

The overarching aim of this research is to reach a better understanding of those people who are homeless, at imminent risk of homelessness or who face housing insecurity but do not appear in Scotland’s official figures.   This includes people who do not approach their local authority for help; people who approach their local authority but do not get a response that meets their needs; those who find alternative solutions; or those who do not see themselves as homeless.   An improved understanding of the different routes into and out of homelessness will help us address gaps in provision and make Scotland’s homelessness system more responsive to people’s needs.

Overall, this work will help the UKRI IUK Urban Systems team identify where its future strategy may go and where it may be able to use its resources to target certain challenges. It will also allow places to identify where they can have the maximum impact in resolving current and future challenges.   The first part of this project is producing a report summarising the work which has already been done looking at the future of our towns and cities and identifying current trends as a result of this synthesis. This streamlined report will identify the key themes and trends. UKRI IUK then expect these trends to be further evaluated within the report, with a more place-specific outlook. This means a taxonomy/classification mechanism of towns and cities being adopted, if a suitable categorisation mechanism already exists, or created. Thereby, each classification will have its key focal themes/trends specified. For the themes and trends, the potential resultant innovation...